Press mull Strauss fate, slam tour schedule

England's ignominious exit from the World Cup highlighted the folly of the team's touring schedule and raised doubts about the fate of Andrew Strauss as one-day skipper, Britain's press said Sunday.

"Donkeys on their last legs plod home," said The Sunday Times after Sri Lanka ended England's gruelling five-month global odyssey with a 10-wicket triumph on Saturday.

"This was a big game, but if they were unable to draw on hitherto admirable reserves of never-say-die spirit, it was largely because most of them were (mentally at any rate) on their last legs already," wrote pundit Martin Johnson.

The Observer said after a "wonderful year" in which England were world Twenty20 champions and Ashes winners against Australia, they looked "careworn" at the World Cup after being on the road virtually non-stop since October.

That defeat "offers Strauss an exit strategy but there is no obvious replacement," the paper said.

Sunday Telegraph columnist Steve James went further, saying Strauss should step down and let Alastair Cook take the one-day captaincy.

"England have lost captains after the last three World Cups (Alec Stewart in 1999, Nasser Hussain in 2003 and Michael Vaughan in 2007) and it would make sense now if Andrew Strauss were to step down as one-day skipper. It is a natural staging post," he wrote.

But he also slammed the game's administrators for the team's heavy schedule abroad, especially the two Twenty20 and seven one-day internationals they had had to play after the Ashes.

"Simply for money. Simply to fill the coffers of Cricket Australia, and then those of the England and Wales Cricket Board in return," he wrote.

Former England captain Andrew Flintoff defended Strauss, however, and agreed that the real problem was systemic.

"Andrew Strauss is the right man for the job," he wrote in the News of the World.

"It's all very well former players jumping on the bandwagon and having a go at the current crop but the fact is we've been a poor one-day side since 1992.

"We got to the World Cup final 19 years ago but we have done nothing since and it's (coach) Andy Flower's biggest job to fix that."